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Chapter 7: All Dreams Must Cease

Rest and unrest derive from illusion;with enlightenment there is no liking and disliking.All dualities come from ignorant inference.They are like dreams or flowers in air:foolish to try to grasp them.Gain and loss, right and wrong:such thoughts must finally be abolished at once.

If the eye never sleeps,all dreams will naturally cease.If the mind makes no discriminations,the ten thousand thingsare as they are, of single essence.To understand the mystery of this one-essenceis to be released from all entanglements.When all things are seen equally, the timeless self-essence is reached.No comparisons or analogies are possible in this causeless, relationless state.

Mind has only one capacity and that is to dream. And this dreaming continues even while you are awake. That’s the reason Sosan or Jesus won’t believe that you are ever awake, because dreaming has one quality: that it can happen only in sleep.

These two things have to be understood first: mind is the source of all dreaming, but dreaming can happen only in sleep. And if you are dreaming twenty-four hours a day, one thing is absolutely certain: that you are fast asleep. Close the eyes any moment and the dream is there; it continues as an undercurrent. Even while you are engaged, for all outward purposes you seem to be awake but deep down a current of dreaming goes on and on and on.

Any moment, close the eyes and it is there. It is not interrupted by your occupations. You walk on the street, you drive the car, you work in a factory, in the office - it continues. You go to sleep, then you can feel it more because, unoccupied, the whole attention comes to the mind.

It is just like the stars. In the day you cannot see stars in the sky. They are there, because where can they go? But because of the light of the sun you cannot see them. If you go in a deep well, two hundred feet down, from there you can see stars in the sky even in the day. They are there, but because of so much light you cannot see them. Darkness is needed for them to be revealed.

The same happens with dreaming: dreams are there in the day also, but darkness is needed so that you can see them. It is just like when you go to a theater: if the doors are open the film may continue, but you cannot see it. Close the doors, make the room dark, and you can see it.

Dreaming is your continuity, and unless this continuity is broken you cannot know what truth is. The question is not whether truth is very far away or near, the question is whether the mind is in a dream or not.

So the basic problem is not how to seek the truth; you cannot seek with a dreaming mind, because whatsoever will come before you, your dreams will be imposed on it. Your dreams will be projected on it, you will interpret it. You will not be able to see as it is. You will see according to your dreams, you will falsify it. Truth is there, because only truth can be. Untruth cannot be.